Als Laie möchte ich mehr über den Klimawandel herausfinden und die Ergebnisse leicht verständlich widergeben. - A layman tries to find out more about Global Change and to describe the findings in a simple way. Your comments, suggestions and critics are welcome! To translate German articles, just use the Translator in the left bar by selecting your preferred Language in the box: "Sprache auswählen"

Dienstag, 4. Februar 2014

Proper cherry picking

There
is a much discussed graph in the blogosphere from Tamino, which shall
approve that there is no delay or pause or decline in global
warming. Its from:

He
states: Twelve
of sixteen were hotter than expected even according to the
still-warming prediction, and all sixteen were above the no-warming
prediction:

Let
get a larger picture:

We
see the red HADCRUT4 graph, coming downwards a bit from 1960 to
1975, and inclining steeper beyond 2000, with a slight drop of about
the last 10 years.

We
see a blue trend, rising at the alarming rate of 0.4°C within only
one decade! This was the time when some scientists started to worry
about global warming.

We
see the green trend, used by the blogger Palmino in the first
graphic, rising less than 0.1°C per decade.

Below
we see the Sunspot Numbers, pulsing in a frequency of about 11
years. Comparing it with the red temperature graph, we see the same
pattern of 11 years pulsing. It shows clear evidence that
temperature is linked to the sunspot activity.

Tamino
started his trend at high sun activity and it stopped at low
activity. Therefore the weak increase during 18 years.

Which
leads us to the question: How long should a time be for observing
climate change? If we look at the sunspot activity and the clear
pattern it produces in the temperature graph, the answer is: 11 years
or a multiple of it.

Or we
can measure from any point of:

high
sun activity to one of the following

low
sun activity to one of the following

rising
sun activity to one of the following

declining
sun activity to one of the following

to
eliminate the pattern of sunspot numbers.

Let's
try it out:

The
last point of observation of the trend is between 2003 and 2014,
about 2008. But even here we can see the trend has changed.

We do
not know about the future. An downward trend seems possible, but a
sharp rise is predicted from some others, which would destroy our
musings so far.

Just
being curious: How would the graph look with satellite data? Let's
check RSS.

Really
interesting. The top of both graph appears to be at 2003 or 2004.
HADCRUT4 shows a 0.05°C decline, RSS a 0.1°C per decade.

A
simple way for smoothing a curve

There
is a more simple way for averaging patterns (like the influence of
sunspots). I added a 132 months average (11 years). This means at
every spot of the graph all neighboring data (5.5 years to the left
and 5.5 years to the right) are averaged. This also means that the
graph will stop 5.5 years from the beginning or the end. And voila,
the curve is the same as with our method in the previous post to
measure at the same slope of a pattern.

As I
said before the top of the curve is about 2003, and our last point of
observation of a 11 years pattern is 2008. From 2008 to 2003 is only
5 years. This downtrend, even averaged, is somehow too short for a
long time forecast. But anyway, the sharp acceleration of the the
1975-2000 period has stopped and the warming even halted - for the
moment.

Note:
I gave the running average graph (pale lilac) an offset of 0.2°C to
get it out of the mess of all the trend lines.

If
Tamino would have smoothed the 11 years sun influence of the
temperature graph before plotting the trend like done here at WFT,
his green trend would be would be the same incline like the
blue 33 year trend:

Even
smoother

Having
learned how to double and triple smooth a curve, I tried it as well
on this graph:

We
learned from Judith
Curry's Blog that on the top of a single smoothed curve a
trough appears. So the dent at 2004 seems to be the center of the 132
month's smoothed wave. I double smoothed the curve and reached 2004
as well, now eliminating the dent.

Note:
Each smoothing cuts away the end of the graph by half of the
smoothing span. So with every smoothing the curve gets shorter. But
even the not visible data are already included in the visible curve.

According
to the data, after removing all the "noise" (especially the
11 year's sun activity cycle) 2004 was the very top of the 60 years
sine wave and we are progressing downwards now for 10 years.

If
you are not aware about the 60 years cycle, I just have used HADCRUT4
and smoothed the 11 years sunspot activity, which influences the
temperature in a significant way.

We
can clearly see the tops and bottoms of the wave at about 1880, 1910,
1940, 1970, and 2000. If this pattern repeats, the we will have 20
more years going down - more or less steep. About ten years of the 30
year down slope are already gone.

One
more pattern

There
is also a double bump visible at the downward slopes of about 10/10
years up and down. By looking closer you will see a hunch of it even
at the upward slope. If we are now at the beginning of the
downward slope - which could last 30 years - we could experience
these bumps as well.

Going
back further

Unfortunately
we have no global temperature records before 1850. But we have one
from a single station in Germany. The Hohenpeissenberg in Bavaria,
not influenced from ocean winds or towns.

Sure,
it's only one single Station, but the measurements were continuously
with no pause, and we can get somehow an idea by looking at the whole
picture. Not in terms of 100% perfection, but just seeing the trends.
The global climate surely had it's influence here as well.

What
we see is a short upward trend of about ten years, a downward slope
of 100 years of about 1°C, an upward trend for another 100 years,
and about 10 years going slightly down. Looks like an about 200 years
wave. We can't see far at both sides of the curve, but if this
Pattern is repeating, this would only mean: We are now on the
downward slope. Possibly for the next hundred years, if there
is nothing additional at work.

Trying to understand

I was always interested in Climate Change but were not able to find out what's true. It was sort of believing. And even some websites which claimed to explain it for everybody, I failed to understand. So I developed the idea for this site

- to keep everything as simple as possible

- to cling to one topic, avoiding a stew of information

- to try to view and describe everything as neutral as possible

- always trying to look at both sides of an discussion or topic

- considering things i can't explain as black boxes

- to find out the mysteries of theses black boxes

- and to describe it in way everybody can understand.

Therefore I ask to keep me informed if I'm not up to my aims and standards.